As they traveled along the river during the day, Sundown pointed to the crocky (10) lying hungry in the shallow mud and told the shedding-skin woman the story. (11)
"There was a girl once," she said. "An ugly girl, her skin all rough and cracked, hair every which-way."
The shedding-skin woman nodded in understanding. That was most of the tale right there, wasn't it.
"This girl, she wasn't like the rest of the children. All she did was cause trouble. If she wasn't causing trouble with the little girls, she was causing trouble with their mothers, if she wasn't causing trouble with the little boys, she was causing trouble with their fathers."
"She was allowed to talk to the men?" (12)
"They'd sure have liked it if she wasn't, but ah, what did she care? Certainly the men, they told her mother, your daughter always makes trouble. If you don't stop her, something terrible will happen. But such an ugly girl, the other children had only to look at her face and say she was only more hateful by the day. A girl like that, she's never going to keep out of trouble. Now, she did grow up, of course. But when it came time for the elders to partner men and women, she was given to no one and no one was given to her. And that was no solution to the problem, so of course she only grew worse. Fed up, the men decided she must be punished. So they struck her and rolled her all over the ground, but she managed to get loose. She ran howling to all the spirits of the world to change her so she might revenge herself upon her people, and when she jumped into the mud of the river to escape the men she became a crocky. Now, when she gets the chance, she sinks in her teeth to drag us to the ground and roll us over and over in the mud."
The shedding-skin woman considered the pokemon below in the mud. "I never bit," she said after a while. "And all I cried was to run further." And she did not climb down.
The lycanroc crept up to Sundown in the darkness.
"I will reach the ocean."
The lycanroc barred his many fangs. "Would you rather die to their teeth than mine?"
"I would pick the teeth that have no complaints about my cooking."
The lycanroc laughed and the howl of it woke the shedding-skin woman. "Be calm," Sundown told her. "I have fed him so he cannot bite unless he is bitten."
"A scrap," he retorted.
"A scrap is enough. Under the stars, there'll be no biting until famine can take hold of your jaws from you." That was less true for the shedding-skin woman than it was for Sundown, of course, but so long as the woman was by Sundown's side, Sundown would be in the way of any bites and he knew it.
"And under the sun?"
"Even if I start to stagger, it's against all reason to fight by the river. I'll roll right into the mud if it comes to it and you know it's true. Cousin Crocky's another one who's said nothing against my cookfire, and she'll just as gladly chomp you down."
10) Based on the scrapped early pokemon kurokii.
11) Based off the story of why the crocodile rolls.
12) The Romans were an intensely misogynistic people.